farther than ever apart
by kazeno
Summary: [picking up where gundamSEED left off] Aslan realises certain things have to be rebuilt.


farther than ever apart [llyse]  
  
Blankness had never been so terrifying.  
  
They had landed at the Kusanagi, partially because Cagalli needed to consult with her councillors and mainly because it was the closest ship. The mechanics had swarmed the Strike Rouge as soon as it landed, and the two adolescents had been forced to practically shove their way out. After that, Cagalli had barely managed to direct them to her room before she had been dragged off for a conference, leaving Aslan to help the unresponsive third member of their party to it.  
  
Kira had been silent the whole trip, violet eyes dark and staring at something the others could not see. Occasionally he would shut those eyes and just as quickly snap them open, unwilling to face whatever horrors lay behind his eyelids. He would not respond to anything they said, and Aslan was beginning to worry.  
  
"Kira, please, say something," he pleaded as they moved through the corridors.  
  
Kira turned wide disturbing violet eyes on him.  
  
"Kira!" Kira, dear friend, hang on, dammit. Those eyes did not seem quite sane; more pain lurked in that endless twilight than Aslan thought he could comprehend, and he mourned that. He mourned the old closeness, the automatic understanding that had enabled him to know perfectly what Kira needed. There was so much that was shrouded between the two of them now, so many unknowns.  
  
Cagalli's room was immaculate, as if she had never slept in it. Perhaps she had not. Aslan sat Kira down on the bed, the dark-haired boy sagging bonelessly against the wall, and fetched a glass of water from a dispenser in the hallway. Kira drained it, then slumped back with his hands clenched around the glass. Feeling useless, Aslan took the only chair in the room and tried to find words to say. He had not been alone with Kira in a long time, and it seemed that the words would not come any more. They sat for hours, it seemed, listening to the sounds from outside as wounded personnel were tended to.  
  
"Why..." Kira's hoarse whisper startled Aslan, even though he had been hoping for it. "All this... useless killing..." The young man looked down at the glass, then up at Aslan, and if his eyes were filled with tears and his hands trembling at least it was no longer the expressionless mask of someone who had seen too much.  
  
"All this death!"  
  
Aslan rose from the chair and hovered helplessly, unsure of what to do. He laid one hand on Kira's shoulder; the other boy flinched violently away, and Aslan withdrew the hand hastily, feeling something like pain stab at his heart.  
  
"Kira..."  
  
"You don't understand," the young man flared in rare anger, rising from the bed to grab Aslan by the collar. "You're a trained pilot! You're trained for this, you're used to this, you can kill people without thinking, but I just can't! Not even when people are depending on my gift for killing I can't just take lives without thinking of the deaths I cause!" He let go of Aslan just as suddenly as he had grabbed him and sank back onto the bed, trembling. "They come to me every night, the people I've killed, I can't escape them. I can't placate them. And... I know they're right when they call me killer, murderer, and I know they're right and... and I can't kill and I have to kill..."  
  
You won't have to kill any more. Not if I have to kill everyone for you.  
  
"Kira..."  
  
"Don't 'Kira' me!"  
  
That last burst of defiance seemed to have taken all the strength out of Kira. He sagged forwards and Aslan caught him, setting him back on the bed. Aslan too was trembling, but not with anger.  
  
What have we become, that we don't understand each other any more? That we can't trust each other any more? He had no idea that Kira felt this strongly about fighting; he had always thought that Kira accepted the need for him to fight even if he did not like it. Aslan believed that it was necessary and he had no qualms about killing, but he was aware of every life he took and if given a choice he would gladly quit the battlefield. He was not the warrior that Dearka or Isaac was.  
  
There was a faint hiss as the door slid open and Lacus Clyne launched herself into the room. For once, her Haro was silent, floating quietly beside its mistress. Kira immediately ran for her, bursting into tears. Aslan knew his presence was unwelcome. He left.  
  
In the corridor, the blue-haired boy leaned against the door, hearing Kira's sobs and Lacus' soothing murmurs. Kira, his best friend, his brother, was now closer to Aslan's ex-fiancée than to Aslan himself, and he felt that loss keenly. He had always believed that he would someday be able to be with Kira again; had always believed that they could just step into their old relationship, picking up where they had left off. Sometime during the past few days he had begun to understand that they could not, but the war had left him no time to think about it. Now, though, reality could not be ignored.  
  
"Hey! Don't just stand there, dammit! Help out!"  
  
Aslan started, blinking at Dearka Elthman as if he had never seen the boy before. The corridor, he realised, held nearly double the amount of people as before, and now there were OMNI uniforms mixed in among the Orb ones.  
  
"What--" Aslan began, confused.  
  
"The Dominion," Dearka snapped, arms full of medical supplies. "The Archangel and the Eternal are busy with their own wounded, so they got shunted here." He dumped something into Aslan's arms. "Take this down to the hangar, if you don't mind." His tone suggested that unpleasant things could happen if Aslan refused. "Go!"  
  
Aslan went. At least he was good for something other than killing.  
  
A/N (20/7/2004): Like, finally. A fic longer than a thousand words. No, wait, it's only 992. Darn. 


End file.
